


Welcome to the Fallout

by alicialeila



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Mentioned Joseph Kavinsky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 02:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6636865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicialeila/pseuds/alicialeila
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was the day of Kavinsky’s funeral.</p>
<p>Adam felt a dark, selfish need to know what, exactly, Ronan Lynch was mourning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to the Fallout

**Author's Note:**

> I imagine that this takes place somewhere between _The Dream Thieves ___and _Blue Lily, Lily Blue. ___

Adam Parrish was sitting in an uncomfortably humid chapel, sandwiched between Ronan and Blue. He looked down and saw Blue holding tightly onto Noah’s hand, and he wondered if the chill of it gave Blue some respite from the stickiness of the late summer heat. To his left, Ronan sat between Adam and Gansey. Ronan was wearing his usual unreadable expression, but Adam could feel his tension through the shoulder that was pressed against him. Adam saw Gansey’s eyes flicker back to Ronan every few minutes. He was worried about him.

Really, Adam knew that they were not here for Kavinsky.

They were here for Ronan.

Adam had been wholly unaffected by Kavinsky’s death. He knew that probably made him a bad person—a _monster_ , a voice told him—but it was the truth. Gansey was probably saddened by Kavinsky’s fate, because Gansey was Gansey, and Adam couldn’t imagine Blue to be so uncaring that she would feel nothing. But really, none of them had talked about it. That day, watching Kavinsky’s fall, was surreal; it was a nightmare. It felt wrong, then, to be sitting in this very real church, surrounded mostly by Aglionby students and faculty who had probably felt obligated to come, listening to some preacher talk about Kavinsky’s life as if he knew anything about it.

Kavinsky’s mother was notably absent, as was Prokopenko. Two people who actually knew anything real about Kavinsky’s life.

Ronan Lynch, Adam guessed, was a third.

Adam peered at Ronan as inconspicuously as he could. What he wouldn’t give to know what was going on in that dark mind, as scary a place as it was. Was Ronan indifferent to Kavinsky’s death, or was his disinterest the usual, practiced kind? The mask. Ronan always said he didn’t lie, but sometimes it was so hard to know what was true. Adam wasn’t sure if Ronan and Kavinsky had been friends, really. They had to have been _something_ though.

If Adam was honest with himself, which he very rarely ever was, he would admit that not knowing was eating him alive.

Adam felt a sharp elbow jab his side. Ronan’s.

“Quit it, Parrish,” he muttered. Adam frowned and turned his attention back to the front of the room.

It wasn’t too much longer until the small crowd started to file out of the church. The five of them stood around the Pig, which was parked beside Ronan’s shiny BMW. Adam wanted to know why they drove separately, but hadn’t asked.

“I’m going to drive Blue home,” Gansey said, but it was mostly directed at Ronan. This, Adam assumed, was Gansey’s way of asking the same question.

Blue looked like she wanted to say something to Ronan, but before she could get anything out, Ronan was opening the driver’s seat of his car. She frowned, stepping forward, and Gansey gently grabbed her wrist. There was nothing they could say.

“You coming, Parrish?” Ronan called out.

Adam felt Gansey’s eyes on him as he nodded and made his way to the passenger seat of the BMW. Ronan spent some nights sleeping on the floor of Adam’s tiny apartment. He wasn’t sure if Ronan came in fear of nightmares, or in the need to get away from Monmouth after them. Sometimes he came bringing an intense, quiet anger with him; it was one that Adam was more familiar with than he’d like to admit. Adam wondered if Ronan dreamt about Kavinsky, and then pushed that thought away with a clench of his fist.

They drove in silence until they arrived at St-Agnes. Adam was surprised when Ronan headed for the church and not Adam’s apartment. Hadn’t Ronan had enough for one day? Adam hesitated; he wondered if he should follow Ronan or give him his privacy. He decided on the latter.

“I’ll, uh, see you in a bit,” he said.

“Whatever,” Ronan replied, entering the church.

Adam found Ronan’s devotion to religion jarring. He knew that it was in part the product of his childhood, an heirloom from his father. As someone who spent most of his life trying to escape his past, Adam couldn’t imagine trying so hard to hold on to it. And here were the Lynch brothers, attending mass every week, as if their father wasn’t a dead dreamer and their mother the creation of a dead dream. But then, Adam also knew that Ronan didn’t just go to church for appearances. After everything Ronan had seen, did he still really truly believe in a God?

Once Adam was in his tiny apartment, he lay on his bed and imagined what Ronan was doing. Was he praying, Adam wondered?

What did Ronan Lynch pray about?

He pictured Ronan, eyes closed, leaning his elbows onto the back of the pew ahead of him, his hands clasped together tightly.

Adam got his textbook out of his bag and pretended that he was doing homework. About fifteen minutes later, he heard a knock at the door. Of course, it was Ronan. He stepped inside and made himself comfortable in his usual spot on the floor beside Adam’s bed. Adam sat next to him, their shoulders almost touching.

“Ronan,” Adam said. He didn’t know what he meant to say. He wasn’t stupid enough to ask if Ronan was okay. He knew that like Adam, the answer to that was, more often than not _no_.

Ronan was still for a while. But finally, he shifted and glanced at Adam.

“It could have been me,” he said quietly.

“What?” Adam studied his face, trying to read between the lines of his anger.

“Kavinsky.” Ronan didn’t look at him. “Could have been me.”

“No,” Adam said, almost automatically. He wasn’t sure if Ronan meant the death, or the general self-destructiveness. But Ronan was not Kavinsky.

“Yes,” Ronan said through a clenched jaw. “If I didn’t have Gansey.” Ronan looked down at his hands. “Or you.”

Adam felt the weight of Ronan’s words settle deep in his gut, spread through him, pulse beneath his ribcage. He held in a shuddered breath. A long silence stretched between them. Adam couldn’t pinpoint when exactly he had started to notice Ronan’s eyes on him, started to expect it, started to wonder _what are you looking at what do you see_. He wanted to know, wanted to ask, and he felt his heart beat faster and faster.

“Ronan,” he tried again. “You’re allowed to grieve.” Saying it to Ronan felt absurd.

“Grieve,” Ronan snorted, with that sharp, dangerous twist to his mouth.

“Yes. He was your… Your friend, wasn’t he?” Adam hadn’t meant to let the hesitation into his voice, but now he had and it revealed too much. His dark, selfish need to know what, exactly, Ronan was mourning.

“What exactly are you asking me, Parrish?” Ronan’s voice was calm, but his eyes were finally on Adam. They were dark and full of heat, whether from anger or something else entirely.

“I don’t know,” Adam lied.

Kavinsky was destructive, reckless, and cruel. Adam hated that vicious laugh, that lazy grin that was most likely the product of some drug-induced haze. But when Kavinsky looked at Ronan, his eyes were alive and present and glinted with _something else_.

_What was it and did you feel it too?_

This, of course, was not a thing that Adam could ask. Instead, he let another silence stretch out between them. Ronan’s eyes were still on him, and Adam allowed himself to return the stare. It should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. It was a battle, waiting to see who would be the first to translate this tension into words.

“He was like me,” Ronan said, breaking the silence first.

“No,” Adam said again. Ronan raised an eyebrow at that, interested in Adam’s denial. “It’s not your fault, what happened to him.”

“I know that.”

“You couldn’t have saved him.”

“Maybe I could have. But what he wanted, I couldn’t…” Ronan trailed off.

“He would have taken you down with him,” Adam said.

“He certainly tried,” Ronan huffed, an almost-laugh. “Fucking asshole.”

There was almost something fond in Ronan’s expression, and Adam tried to hide the frown that tugged at his mouth. “He _was_ an asshole,” Adam muttered.

Ronan was still watching him, a smile ghosting his lips. Suddenly, Adam felt exposed. But then, Ronan wasn’t usually quite so open with his gaze, so maybe they were even. Ronan hadn’t answered Adam’s question, but Adam hadn’t really asked a question Ronan could answer. For now, this quiet moment was enough. Neither of them was great with words, another thing they had in common, but maybe they would find them. Eventually.


End file.
